The future of Open Rails

[BrandonS261]

Very good point! This is why I think the ORTS needs to stop changing the physics so much and focus on other needs and wants! There is no need to keep tweaking areas that are already very well done! Leave it alone if it is not broken and move on! Yes I admit I am a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my models so I totally understand but there comes a point where enough is enough already!

Brandon

[TrainSimJack]

Guys, I really wanted to love Open Rails, as the prospect of customization and open source both appeal to me.

But I have to second what's been said above - The new user experience leaves a lot to be desired.

I'd also like to comment that the 3rd party DLC situation is a nightmare for anyone new entering the hobby:

If there's someone out there that can help me fall in love with open rails, that'd be amazing.

[EldoradoRailroad]

With regard to content I give you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use

The restrictions have led to "Invisible Rails". Private collections that can never be seen in public. Although there is a lot more to add, I will not add anything else here.

With regard to the actual program itself, it is hard to get too enthusiastic where each new testing release or often otherwise seems to create more bugs. It is my suspicion that ORMT would rather see this project frozen than put any effort into actually moving forward. But there is no money to line a wallet here. Far more time is spent with "Re-Factor Rails" than "Enhancing Rails" at the "official level", with all those bits that are missing that have been outlined over and over again. Open Rails should not really have team managers in control if there is no team to manage. But as mentioned, there is no money to line a wallet that would make the changes you want public. I suspect there are many private forks of Open Rails that do all kinds of things you cannot imagine. This is the classic "tragedy of the commons".

When you talk about paying somebody to do something like TSRE, yes, if you comb through older posts you will see that money was collected to improve/enhance the TSRE program, it will also dawn on you that the author of TSRE has vanished. The source code that you have on github for TSRE is a little beyond most, and some of us wonder "why bother". Those who are in the "know", provide a deafening silence when asked about it. As such the excuse is that TSRE did not follow what the ORMT wanted to see, so it exists, and you use that program at your own peril with no support from ORMT, even though there is no official replacement to do the same job. Limiting your scope of expertise to C# and avoiding anything else speaks volumes.

So yes, time for younger and more eager blood. But I caution, unless you are a true nerd, most users will not dig into anything that causes brain pain. That is what is avoided with the other sims you have mentioned that are both expensive and limited in terms of a hobby you can hack/modify/break rules with with. For that experience I give you Open Rails. Open Rails is a "modern" replacement for MSTS that reads and displays content created for MSTS. MSTS is about as ancient as Lotus 1-2-3 is to Excel/Open Office. Be thankful that Open Rails exists, but also remember the initial hard work "guessing" how to make things work from scratch!

Ask not what Open Rails can do for you, but ask what you can do for Open Rails. Nobody said that learning was going to be easy. There are many that are not part of ORMT that have been tireless with enhancements, but they are not going to provide/create the tools that you seek, at least not publicly.

On a closing note, with FPS eye candy games prevalent, finding those in and age range of 10 to 45 who like trains the way you might may be a hard sell. Given that a lot of coding work is done with "cut and paste" from other libraries these days, finding those who are going to be young and eager to work with the "bare metal" is a bridge too far.

Steve

[R. Steele]

Given the complexities of bringing the "graphic presentation" up to current gaming standards...what's to prevent a group of people starting a funding site and hiring a professional to do the work....it would be a branch of OR, like any of the other branches that are in existence -- both known and unknown - private and public.


I think I mentioned this before, there always appears to be some complication with the funding approach and open source.

[eric]

Dovetail seems to be just fine with focusing on TSW for new platform and eventually bringing what fits into TSC for the backward compatibility.

Perhaps it's time to stop looking at OR as a monolithic single offering.

Put together a team focused on new v2 formats and a new engine. You'll find more young people willing to work on bleeding edge approaches vs trying to work in formats older than they are.

We can always find a way to retrofit v2 functions into v1, and ways to migrate the v1 content to v2, but v2 needs to exist first.

[Unoriginal]

Just an FWI, TSW and TSC don’t have any sort of compatibility with each other. (If that’s what you meant by that first sentence).

[eric]

The content is incompatible, however some of the code improvements on the game engine itself are no doubt being shared.

[BrandonS261]

So reading what others have said since I started this conversation over on Elvastower and here I have kind of broken it up into a plan on what I think should be done along with a few other ideas I have.

I firstly want to thank the Open Rails team for everything they have accomplished with there main goal of not needing MSTS anymore and making ORTS a separate program all in it's self. I am also sorry if I came in a little harsh in the beginning but I only wanted to see Open Rails move forward towards the future and try to keep up with the technology that we have at our disposal currently after working on this for so long.

Yes ORTS still needs some work and is a long ways a way from where many of us would like it to go but that being said it is a far cry from what we had in the MSTS days! ORTS may not be perfect by any means and is always going to be a work in progress but the potential is there to make it so much better for the future of Train Simulation.

I know many are just doing this coding in there spare time and I thank you for that and wish I knew how to do coding myself so I could help out more with the project. Maybe it's time I go about and start teaching myself.

Now lets get down to the nitty gritty of things and start talking business on what I have proposed.

1. We set up a donation spot on the ORTS website so when the time comes we are able hire some professional coders to help out with the project. Yes I know this is controversial but it may help ORTS succeed in the long run. This not only would give us a little bit more of an edge with the times but also speed up the process a little bit and let the hired coders work on the more complicated codes that can't just be learned or done overnight. This in turn will allow the ORTS coders can then focus on what matters to them and take some of the burden of being so overwhelmed by all of the request by others saying this needs to be done and that needs to be done.

2. I think having the Route Editor, Consist Editor, Activity Editor and Track Viewer all in one separate program like MSTS did would be ideal. Weather we use TSRE or the ORTS team build our own route, activity and consist editors.

3. Breaking up the Manuals would also be ideal considering how long one is with all of the different operations, keys, running a locomotive so on and so forth.

4. Having a separate ORTS download for beginners I think would be very beneficial as well. I know this one may be a long shot but I think it would help ORTS with getting new simmers interested in it. Now that being said my thought with this is to have it be kind of like an introduction to ORTS with it being only the Stable version of ORTS with activities on how to run the trains properly, along with showing all of the features that ORTS has to offer. This would also get updated every time a new Stable release of ORTS gets released. It also would not need all of the extra advanced features that comes with Open Rails. Kind of like what myself and others have stressed is the time is now to get younger people involved and always strive to get younger people involved no matter where we are in the games creation.

Yes I know all of this is a tall order and it will take time to complete but remember this is a game that we all should be proud of and yes MSTS IS DEAD but it still lives on with ORTS!!! Without ORTS there is no way we could be making content that is unbelievable when it comes to detail not only in sound, and physics but also 3D cabs, spectacular routes and so much more that was not even possible 10 years ago!I We can still use our old equipment that was made more then 2 decades ago because of Open Rails and that in its self is a testament to what the ORTS team has done over the years so I thank you again to the ORTS team for all you have done! Not only for me but for all of us!

Brandon

[eric]

Let's not set up false hope for being able to get paid developers.

As somebody who has had to hire C# developers on contract, you're looking at anywhere from $30 on up an hour for someone who can take a well written design document and follow instructions.

Someone who can think abstractly out of the box without instructions is going to cost a heck of a lot more.

Not impossible to come up with some donations, but what happens when the money runs out?

[BrandonS261]

Very good point Eric and yes I did think about that before suggesting it!

I do however think ORTS does have a big enough following that it could be done and all I was trying to say in my thoughts were it would be beneficial if we did but first the money needs to come in for that to happen.

I was only trying to make it as a suggestion and see what others thought about the idea but if it will end up being too much of a hassle maybe we don't even bother with hiring people to help out with the coding.

I know it would be risky and it is a totally different ball game when money is involved with something like this so it may not be phesable to do.

Brandon

[TrainSimJack]

Let's not set up false hope for being able to get paid developers.

As somebody who has had to hire C# developers on contract, you're looking at anywhere from $30 on up an hour for someone who can take a well written design document and follow instructions.

Someone who can think abstractly out of the box without instructions is going to cost a heck of a lot more.

Not impossible to come up with some donations, but what happens when the money runs out?

This x 1000.

[BrandonS261]

Now I am not a coder myself but I would like to try and get more people involved with Open Rails. Specifically the younger generations. Yes those screenshots are outstanding and it would be nice to try and get Open Rails up to par with what Trainz and TS20xx eventually but it is going to take time, effort by ones who are committed and possibly some money as well. It is close but in my eyes it still has that MSTS feel from over 20 years ago! I know it will take some time and some know how on coding but with the people we have and possibly some new blood into the Open Rails community it may be possible to eventually get there.

I think the first step is to get the ORMT involved and see what there thoughts are first. I do not want to step over anyone's toes here or at Trainsim so I am trying to be cautious on how I approach these ideas. Yes right now they are just ideas and no one is committed to anything quite yet.

With winter setting in I feel it would be a good time to get things started and try and get a few committed to this project. Myself included and see what comes about it. I am very proud of what the ORTS Team has done so far with physics and I do not think that should be stopped. We have a great team for that and thinking more about it we need to keep that team the way it is and come up with another team that would be committed to other aspects of the ORTS development so we do not have just one person working on this and one person working on that and so on and so forth.

My question to all of you is first off who is willing to commit and help out with this project and two what would you like to see come out of these ideas if they do come to fruition?

I know for me the number one thing on my list is better graphics all around but that will take a ton of work and would need many people involved in that side of things and I am also aware that dynamic weather is also another huge one on the list for many of us. I do see that coming together though as time goes on but we all need to take ORTS with a grain of salt as I have come to learn over the years.

Every train simulator game has there short comings and there will never be that PERFECT Train Simulator game that everyone agrees with. We first need to be happy with what the ORTS team has already accomplished and thank them for all that they have done over the years.

I just hope we can get more involved in the future and keep Open Rails alive, keep making improvements and for everyone to have fun because after all this is a GAME for all of us to enjoy and it should not be stressful for anyone. There are no deadlines, no one is getting paid for any of this and it is something that we have all enjoyed playing, sharing our content, knowledge and time to help one another out when we have someone new come into the forums.

Brandon

[eric]

Start with something easy: good tutorials..... you don't need to be a coder to give someone clear guidance on how to get up and running....

[c44d9w]

I guess I am a bit of a contrarian here. I understand the need to get younger people interested, but if that means making it a game, then I am not interested. Eye candy is low in my priorities.

I want to operate trains that behave realistically, over routes that are prototypical.

I also think that ORTS needs to reduce complexity, and some of that comes from the MSTS compatibility. Something to consider is to convert MSTS files to ORTS files. Another thing to consider is modularisation - eg. we should be able to include a specific brake vavle or diesel engine, instead of having to define the same over and over (each time just slightly different).

I agree that route and model building needs to be improved (I have yet to dare to build a route).

Roger

[R. Steele]

...Something to consider is to convert MSTS files to ORTS files. Another thing to consider is modularisation - eg. we should be able to include a specific brake vavle or diesel engine, instead of having to define the same over and over (each time just slightly different).. .... Roger

Are you using include files? .... or .... Am I misreading your post?